On September 26, the spacecraft that NASA carried out the "Dual Asteroid Redirection Test" (DART) mission successfully hit an asteroid called "Dimorphos" and deviated from its original orbit.
is only a test with the results yet to be seen, but it is still a landmark event.
In the exploration of nature, humans have gone to heaven and earth, and are currently able to work in 300 kilometers of outer space, but the progress of "ground exploration" is not fast. The deepest part is the former Soviet Union's Kola super-deep well, which can't continue if it is dug more than 10,000 meters underground. The diameter of the earth is 12,700 kilometers. What else can be found below 10,000 meters? If you continue to dig deeper, you may be able to dig out surprises and a civilization that humans have never known.
The earth has a history of 250 million years, and humans have only appeared for 3 million years. It is hard to say whether this was the stage of low-level biological as described by scientists before. We can assume that there are civilizations on Earth that are more advanced than humans, so where did they go? If it is climate change, some remains will be left behind, and the biggest possibility is that they have encountered an asteroid. We assume that the " prehistoric civilization " is more developed than humans, and they have everything they have now, and they are more advanced. When this civilization was entering a higher stage, there was a loud bang, and an unexpected asteroid hit the earth, destroying the civilization along with the history that recorded it, buried it under the 20,000-meter strata.
—Some people will say that you have watched too much of " Three-Body ". It is simply a science fiction novelist who said that the five eras on Earth have long been concluded. That being said, science is moving forward in constant discovery. Before the discovery of dinosaur fossils, did anyone know that dinosaurs have lived on Earth? In contrast, dinosaurs are buried relatively shallowly.
simulation experiment shows that an asteroid with a diameter of 20 kilometers will destroy all living things on the earth. And there are thousands of such asteroids, passing by the earth.
Human survival may be just an accidental event, or it may be a dream made by God, which is a philosophical issue. The reality is that all the material and intangible wealth we have created for thousands of years may be destroyed and disappeared in an asteroid impact.
Currently, the largest planetary collision incident discovered by humans was the 1908 Russian Tungus explosion. An asteroid with a diameter of 65 meters fell into the Tungus area of Siberia, Russia, destroying the coniferous forest with an area of 2,000 square kilometers in the area, knocking down about 80 million trees, and shock wave shattered all windows within 700 kilometers nearby. Maybe God's hand gently tweaked it, causing this meteorite , which is actually not an asteroid, to fall into the no-man's land. What would happen if it hit a city like New York, London, and Moscow?
1994, the whole world witnessed the comet's impact. Within 6 days, more than 20 fragments of the Sumerk-Levi 9 "come hit hard on the surface of Jupiter at a speed of 60 kilometers per second. The energy released is equivalent to 2 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs, leaving 4 deep pits with a diameter of tens of thousands of kilometers. When witnessing the phenomena that happen every day in a universe, humans should be glad to escape another disaster.
Facing the threat of asteroids, humans have only two ways, one is to escape and the other is to defend. Immigrate to space, build settlements, and put eggs in different baskets. Unfortunately, the current viewing is The theoretically habitable planet closest to the earth has 4.2 light years. Light years are unit of length, which is the distance from the speed of light to travel within one year. One light year is about 9.4 trillion kilometers. Even if humans can create a vehicle that can fly so far, it will take tens of thousands of years to arrive on this planet called Proxima Centauri B.
The second method is "defense", trying to change the orbit of the asteroid and keep it away from the earth. The "double asteroid redirection test" does such a task, and its significance is epoch-making, and it cannot be an exaggeration to estimate it. This is a great merit that benefits all mankind.
(Tao Xie original WeChat public account: taoxieshou)
